Google declined to comment on the matter, but Digital Trends reported sources saying both parties have been in discussions for weeks and the current offer is "close to one billion dollars".

WhatsApp`s business development chief Neeraj Arora told All Things Digital that the company is not holding sales talks with Google.

According to an English daily, Arora was the former mergers and acquisitions chief at Google in 2010 when it made an unsuccessful 6 billion dollars bid for the then red-hot coupon company Groupon, only to be rebuffed.

Groupon later went public. Arora`s denial to All Things Digital did not say that sales talks between WhatsApp and Google had never taken place, the paper added.

The messaging service is reckoned to have over 250 million users worldwide, and sends more than 10 billion messages daily.

It works on all the smartphone platforms, where it provides a cross-platform messaging service that has proved hugely popular with teenagers.